


instead of diving in, you steamrolled and now everything is falling flat (you’re still drowning. you hope she breathes air back into your burning lungs)

by vandike



Series: ann(e) 4 ann(e) [1]
Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 15:08:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18943450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vandike/pseuds/vandike
Summary: in the aftermath of everything, anne frets and regrets. however, it’s not even the aftermath. it’s barely even the beginning. anne should’ve known better, but love does what love does best: makes a blubbering fool of a woman.





	instead of diving in, you steamrolled and now everything is falling flat (you’re still drowning. you hope she breathes air back into your burning lungs)

**Author's Note:**

> yes hello hi. anne spider hands lister tops but is an emotional bottom.

anne watches her sleep. 

her hands are clasped, fingers intertwined. 

her elbows rest on her knees. 

she twists her ring around, rubs her thumb across her hand in a way meant to soothe but riles instead. 

despite it all, the plans and the machinations and careful carefulness, it all comes down to this; once more, once for all, all the fucking times it’s fucking happened it rots down to a single thing. 

ann squeezes her hands together to temper herself, exhales through her nose. she shouldn’t have done this at all. she shouldn’t have looked at her and thought at all about the soft hands. about the rosey cheeks. about the space hidden between the ear and jaw, perfect for hiding kisses in. 

anne thought about none of those things right in that warm light of morning, where everything is so soft and light that anything other than their breathing would be a heinous intrusion. it was a sacred ground they rested on. they were nothing but heavenly bodies in here, orbiting and pulling and guiding. 

anne thought, so long ago it seems like a silly dream of youth, that she was the star by which the universe orbited. the god that informed everything of self and being and body. 

anne imagined that all the girls that came before left her because they couldn’t stand to look at her light. to look and be amazed. that the stray sparks she gave off would burn the lace that trimmed their sleeves. 

anne gets very thirsty, licks her dry lips and flexes her fingers again. 

she thinks of her ann, then. 

properly, since the sun broke the oppressive dark silence that clung to their bodies during the low, low hours of the night. 

she remembers her, then. 

remembers how she’s the sun of everything that is anne. how she speaks without words of what anne is, what anne was, what anne will be. she tells anne that she is something glorious, something to be treasured and celebrated and adored on knees and tip toes and flat on her back with a curved spine that bumps against her greedy fingers. 

anne had dreamed herself up. stone walls and waterfalls. crashing and strong, holding up against whatever winds wished to collapse her. 

ann smiled her into existence, that first day (no, second. she does not remember the first, and what a fool she was. what they could have had in those years. what the world could have been in those years. utterly wasted.) in the parlour. 

she broke, then. those walls fell away, a mould she didn’t know she had been setting in until it all fell away when she wished ann farewell and decided that she was the one to dupe. the silly, simple little slip of a woman whose gentleness was so palpable anne felt softer for being in her company. 

anne feels a bit of pain from where her ring has been pushed against her skin from her squeezing. she unfurls her hands, pink and white against her nightclothes. 

she exhales. 

anne doesn’t pray. 

whatever god that has made her the butt of this joke time and time again isn’t a kind one. 

anne thinks. 

tries to at least. of the person she was before ann. it seems like a distant memory, a stranger. 

she thought of herself as infallible. but that was never the case, oh not ever. she always was the one who toppled the empire of bodies she cultivated, simply by feeling more than she ought to. 

time and time again, anne felt more than proper. time and time again, proprietary horse whipped her down to size. 

anne feels the rage that was simmering behind her teeth spill over her pressed lips, ghosting down her chin. it turns to oil in her mouth now, foul and heavy and poisonous. 

anne can’t breathe with it all. 

she wishes desperately that this was a horrible dream brought on by too much brandy before bed time. wishes everything was clear, instead of murky. opacity had never seemed the enemy til now, but if she could make everything into glass so it was clear she would, brittleness be damned. 

anne clenches her jaw and aches. 

she ought to stop being so foolish. she ought to leave. leave a note and take herself back to where she was the one dictating, not being dictated to. 

back to her coal and her house and her life. 

she should tell ann that this was all a game and she’s the loser, not Miss Anne Lister, oh no. 

anne is never the one at the short end. anne is always the one on top, always rolling with the punches and digging her heels in against the bucking horses. 

anne is the strong one. the tough one. the one with the answers. 

not the one left. left behind, time and time again. no. anne is not that woman. she can’t be, not again. 

not this time.

anne’s hands are white marble. 

if she holds on harder she will break. anne doesn’t want to break. not here, not now. not because of silly little ann walker, with her silly little marked private letters and her silly little wounded eyes and her silly little mouth that begged so sweetly that anne really, honestly, truly didn’t know how not to say yes to. 

anne thinks about the proposal. the sixth months of a courtship that she had visions of ending on her knees in supplication, mouth filled with communion during a sermon spoken with hands tangled in her curls and whispering of hips. anne can’t think. won’t think. refuses to think. she rubs blood back into her white knuckles. swallows. it rests heavy in her throat. she decides, then, that it will be her or - 

her or nothing. ann -

ann stirs. anne is greater. anne feels like she will throw up. she swallows the bile down. anne will tell ann that she must choose. anne will hope.

anne has always been a creature of hope. more the fool she. 

but as she stares in ann’s eyes in the morning eyes, broken and wounded, anne knows. 

knows she won’t survive this, either way. every ending is a beginning. a door closed is a window opened. she hopes. hopes for ann. hopes for love. hopes for anything. everything. 

anne opens her mouth, speakers. gathers her clothes and leaves their (no no. no.) bedroom. 

her cards have all been played. miss walker has the upper hand, but oh hasn’t she always? 

anne knows the moon will rise and so the sun shall after. she just hopes she can watch them in the arms of the woman who’s stolen her heart. 

(well, is it stealing if it's unintentional? if she puts her own in its place for safe keeping?)

anne goes, leaves first for once. it doesn’t feel as grand as she had thought it would.


End file.
